On November 7, 2000 the Presidential election took place and it was a competition of candidates for presidency between republicans and democrats as Bill Clinton was vacating the position. Former Pres. George W. Bush was the Republican candidate, and the former Vice President, Al Gore, was the Democratic candidate. Due to the differences of the respective counts from exit polls, which revealed Gore was leading, to actually ballot counts, which declared Bush as the winner on the Florida state, this statutory case became a political controversy.
Background. This election was a known for its controversy as the winning candidate had received fewer votes than the runner up particularly with the awarding of Florida’s 25 electoral votes. Florida has awarded 271 votes to Bush making him the winner, while Gore received 266 votes only. This lead Gore to file a case and call for recount of the Florida votes.
The controversy begun when the networks covering for the election had stated their predictions of Gore’s lead over Bush on the 2000 election based on the tally of the monitored exit polls., yet on the actual ballot counts, Bush won over Gore including territories where Gore’s victor were anticipated, particularly with Tennessee and Florida. Networks had retracted their forecast and followed the statutory results declaration, having Bush won the presidency.
Florida Supreme Court didn’t take seemingly glitch into sitting, it ordered for recounting of electoral ballots in some counties as requested by Al Gore. Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Volusa, were the participating counties in the recount. On the process of recounting, some of the counties stop participating and declared the prior tally from the first counting like Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County. On November 26, Bush was certified as the winner of Florida’s electors by the state canvassing board. Another order of recounting was issued by Florida Supreme Court and this time is statewide. However, United States Supreme Court halted the statewide recount stating that the step was unconstitutional.
